Personal Fitness Professional - March 2009 - (Page 8) Part 2 — Cut costs while increasing revenue using strategic marketing By Rich Butkevic T hings are getting a little sticky, aren’t they? e economy will probably get worse before it gets better, and people aren’t exactly tripping over themselves to spend money on trainers lately. To most people, training is the sort of luxury expense that gets lumped into the same spending category as “buy a new boat,” “go to Hawaii” or “pick up one of those little rhinestone sweaters for my Chihuahua.” I’m not going to lie to you, it’s easier to make money in your training business when the economy is humming along and people can sell houses before glaciers wash them away, but just because it’s easier in a good economy doesn’t mean we have to make any less money in this one. We just have to market a little smarter. Let’s take a look at five things you can do to keep your training business oblivious to the economic ups and downs. Here’s a little secret: Most local newspapers are dying to find something to write about. When’s the last time you went to them with an idea for an article? How about the paper from the town over? Press releases aren’t just for big companies like some people think. ey’re for anything you think could be newsworthy. Have a new training class for a particular demographic? Press release time. How about a way to tie your training services into a current event? Don’t waste it. Drafting a press release will take you a maximum of 30 minutes, and you’ll be shocked at how many calls you’ll get if you send it directly to your local papers and even more surprised at how much business a little write-up in your local paper brings you. Utilize Local Media is is overlooked constantly. Everybody is scrambling for ways to get in front of millions of people online, but where do most of your clients come from? Locally! Who cares if you get 100 hits a day from Bangladesh? Focus the bulk of your attention on your local market so your marketing costs plummet and your revenue shoots through the roof. Leverage Yourself If you’re going to make serious money as a trainer, you have to leverage yourself; trading hours for dollars just won’t cut it. What do I mean by leveraging yourself? Well, you need to duplicate yourself, in a manner of speaking, or at least duplicate your effort. For example, when you train someone for an hour, and they pay you $100, that’s nice, but there’s only so far you can go with it. If you train clients all day every day, you’re still limited to how much you can earn, and it’s a very time-consuming, tough road. But what if you had a way to train two clients at the same time? Now you’re starting to leverage yourself. But it gets better — a lot better. What if you could collect money from clients without ever showing up to train them? Isn’t that pretty much what happens when someone hires trainers to work at a club? e club has multiple people receiving training at the same time, and they generate a portion of revenue. at’s one way to do it, but having staff creates a whole new mess of problems, which is why I recommend you leverage yourself in other ways. You can create a book or DVD series once and sell it over and over again, and it doesn’t take up any time once the product is created. ere are many other ways to leverage yourself: books, audio programs, online training, seminars, conferences, group events, etc. Put some thought into how you can clone yourself, and profit from it. It may be a lot of work initially, but once it’s done, you have an asset you can draw money from for a very long time.
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